To Be Restored
by TheBitchCartoonist
Summary: New York City has been overrun with zombies. No one knows how it all started, but it may have something to do with Sam and Max. Now, in order to bring back the world that they once knew, they have to find out who, or what, caused this and destroy them to eliminate the zombie threat.


These streets used to be full of life. They were crowded with busy civilians and honking vehicles. The buildings were once alive with business. It was New York City, a busy city full of opportunities and new people from all over the world. Now it's just a deserted wasteland littered with various broken building parts and vehicles, half-eaten bodies of pedestrians, and a bone-chilling silence.

There wasn't much else left, except for a small portion of the population. Those few survivors either boarded themselves in their houses or fled to safer areas. However, a handful of brave souls did neither, and stayed to fight back those who had taken everything from them. Three local detectives of Straight Street have been risking their lives to save what's left of civilization from further destruction. It's up to them to-

"Do you really have to do that?"

"Huh?" Sam looked up from looting the corpse of a suited man. "Oh. Sorry, Flint. I must have been subconsciously narrating again." The man seemed to have shot himself in the head with his own shotgun, which laid in his lap. Sam took it before standing back up and walking down the street with Flint and Max.

"Seriously, Sam, we know what happened. It was only about a week ago," said Max, hugging himself and shivering from the cold. "D-Dammit! Why couldn't the catastrophic zombie apocalypse happen during the summer?"

Flint spotted a wealthy looking woman's corpse with a missing head and walked over. He wriggled the blood-caked fur coat from her body and turned back to Sam and Max. He held out the coat to Max and said, "This'll probably keep you warm, little dude."

"I'm not wearing that. It looks like it's made from rabbit fur," Max refused, although he was on the verge of catching hypothermia. "Give it to Sam."

"Nah, you should wear it, Flint," Sam shook his head, "There's no way all that plentiful body hair is enough to keep you warm."

Flint Paper stared at him as if he had seven heads. "Are you kidding me? I'm not wearing a woman's coat!" He threw it aside and continued walking. "Anyways, what'd you guys find while poking around?"

Max grinned and held out his hands, revealing several small objects. "I found a nickel, a disconnected eyeball, and page 53 of _The DaVinci Code_!"

"I'm afraid those things won't help out much, little buddy," Sam chuckled while patting his friend's fuzzy white head.

Flint rolled his eyes and looked at Sam. "What about you, big guy? Find anything we could use?"

"Yeah." The dog showed him the shotgun he had picked up from earlier. It was in fair condition, aside from being a little dirty.

"Whoa," whistled Flint, eying the gun and smirking, "She's a beauty. Is she loaded?"

"Erm. . . sorry, Flint. Only two bullets left," muttered Sam after he checked.

Flint ran his fingers through his hair and sighed deeply. "We've searched this whole neighborhood for ammunition. You'd think that we would've at least found _something_!"

"What are we going to do when we're completely out of ammo?"

"Out of ammo?!" Max raised an eyebrow and pulled out his Luger. "I NEVER run out of bullets!" He shot at the sky before realising that he was out of bullets.

Flint began to walk away. "Tell you what, fellas, I'm gonna head on over to the weapons shop on the other side of town to see if I can find us some bats or axes or something. You two keep looking for guns and ammunition. We'll meet back here in two hours, are we clear?"

"Like crystal," Sam nodded and continued walking with Max as Flint went in the opposite direction. "Alright, Max, remember that we're looking for bullets."

"Bullets. Got it," repeated Max assuringly.

They passed several other bodies. None of them fazed Max at all, but Sam wasn't so accepting of this reality. Those rotting corpses were once alive and living among them as friends and neighbors.

He was already getting chills, and the huge gust of cold, winter wind that came by made it worse. Sam hugged himself, wishing that he had kept his hat and coat for extra warmth. But he wasn't about to keep wearing something that was mostly covered in the blood of his once dear friend.

A loud sneeze brought Sam back from his deep thinking. He looked down at Max and found that he looked much colder than he was. "I wish you would have just taken that coat instead of being so stubborn." he said coldly. After a while of getting no response or gesture, Sam went back to looking around for supplies.

He looked over to a corpse of a young boy sat against a coffee shop wall. A black scarf was around his neck, and he had on some black gloves that looked to be about Max's size. He grabbed onto Max's wrist and dragged him over to the body, and then stopped and sighed. He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head, feeling horrible about even thinking of looting a dead child's body. The sight made him wonder where his parents were.

"You're not gonna make me wear that stuff," Max said uneasily, "are you?"

Sam kneeled down and carefully removed the scarf, unwinding the cloth from the neck of the child. "Sorry, little buddy, but I hate seeing you suffer like that." He got the scarf and began to slide off the gloves. "How am I supposed to keep you alive when you refuse to take care of yourself?" He turned to face Max and began to dress him, tightly wrapping the scarf around his neck and helping him with the gloves.

The lagomorph grimaced and groaned, "Ugh, these clothes smell weird."

Sam smiled and stood up after he was finished. "Since when have you ever cared about smelling weird? Well, are you warming up? Need anything else? I'm sorry that it's not much, but we can keep looking for-"

"I'm fine, Sam!" moaned Max, yet still smiling and showing off his shark-like teeth.

They continued walking side-by-side down the same way they were going before. "Alright. I'm just worried about you, is all," Now that he had taken care of his little buddy, Sam could focus on looking for ammunition. "You remember what we're looking for, right, Max?"

"Love?"

Sam could hardly contain his laughter, but he had to keep serious. "N-No, Max. _Ammunition_. You need to focus on what's important nowadays."

"That's no fun," pouted Max, crossing his arms and furrowing his brow.

"I know, but we have to do it to stay alive."

"What's the point of staying alive if we can't have fun anymore?"

Sam sighed. "Max. . . I-" He stopped, looking ahead of him. There was a car with a flat tire in the middle of the road, but he could've sworn that he saw something inside. He quickened his pace until he reached the vehicle, leaning against the windshield and looking into it.

Max caught up with him, having to stand up on his tippy-toes to see. "What is it, Sam?"

"It's exactly what we need, Max," he replied, "Food, clothes, medical supplies, and ammo!"

"This is good, right?"

"Yes! It's very good! Amazing, even!"

"What an unexpected and coincidental stroke of luck!"

Sam was now truly smiling for the first time since this all started. "Haha! We. . . wait a second." He pulled on the car door handle and found that it was locked. "Crap, it's locked!"

"Lemme try!" Max grabbed onto the handle, put his feet against the door, and pulled.

"It's locked, Max," he said, shaking his head, "We have to find some other way to open it. Any ideas?"

The rabbit was still pulling onto the door, until the handle broke off a few seconds later. "We could just bust in."

"Without noise, Max. We have to do it quietly." He didn't really see anything that could get the job done without bringing unwanted attention. He might be able to use that carving knife, which was apparently used to stab the car's tire to ensure that it wouldn't get stolen, to cut a hole into the glass and unlock it from the-

His heart skipped a beat. "What the hell?!" He turned and saw that Max had somehow broken the driver's seat windshield.

"Look, Sam! I did it!" he yelled over the deafening car alarms.

"MAX!" Sam pulled down on his ears. He panicked and got inside the car, pressing buttons and pulling levers and trying to turn off the alarm. Eventually, he turned it off, hoping that it wasn't too late. Sam leaned his head on the steering wheel and breathed heavily.

"Jeez, don't have a cow, Sam. I unlocked the car, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did," panted Sam as he crawled out of the idle car, "You also put our lives in danger by setting off the fucking car alarm, you idiot!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't you remember?! Noise attracts. . ." He paused, both Sam and Max stiffened and turned their heads to the direction the large footsteps came from. Each rumble got louder and made their hearts beat faster.

Soon they heard moaning, and Sam saw something come around the corner of the street. He saw one big mauler that was accompanied by a bloater and more walkers than he had time to count.

"Holy multiple servings of rotten flesh with a side of death and destruction across the street from Denny's!" Sam opened the door to the car and searched through the loot. He pulled out some bullets for his giant pistol and shotgun and began quickly reloading. "Max, hurry up and reload your Luger! There's a whole bunch of them coming right for us!"

"Okay!" Max jumped into the backseat and rummaged through the junk as Sam was shooting a walker in the head.

"It's a good thing Flint had us practice shooting cans and bottles!" Sam shouted as he shot another walker in the front of the zombie crowd, "I'm actually hitting the zombies this time!"

Max jumped out of the car with his gun fully loaded and a menacing grin on his face. "Let's see who can kill the most at the end!" He scurried over to the other side of Sam and jumped into the air, killing three walkers all Matrix-style.

"It might not be a good thing," Sam yelled as he yanked the carving knife from the car's flat tire, "to turn this into a game! We're in a pretty deadly situation at the moment!" He threw the knife right between a walker's eyes.

The mauler punched the ground with his mighty fists, sending a wave of energy down the street and making a large delivery truck and several chunks of concrete to fly at the duo. They ducked behind their supply car as the concrete pelted the hood and broke the remaining windshields. The delivery truck flew overhead and landed a few feet from them.

"_NOW _do you know why I wanted to make as less noise as possible?!" Sam scolded.

"Okay, I get it! Stop nagging me, woman!" Max rolled his eyes and stood up to shoot another zombie. "Hey, Sam, you can get off your ass now! It stopped raining rocks, and the dead bastards are getting closer!"

Sam stood up and saw that they were really close now. He shot three more walkers in the head and took a step back. "I hope we can kill all of them! I'd hate to leave the car full of supplies behind!"

The bloater shot a giant kidney stone towards their direction. Sam barely moved out of the way in time, and when the stone hit the delivery truck, it created a massive explosion and knocked him off his feet.

He landed on his back and groaned in pain. Max ran over and extended his hand to him and helped him get back on his feet. Sam was a little dizzy, so he couldn't shoot straight and missed several zombies.

"Sam, we need to fall back! We'll come to get the supplies after the streets clear back up!" yelled Max as he began to move away from the crowd, gesturing for Sam to follow.

Sam nodded and backed away with Max as he tried to shoot at other zombies. After finally killing one after he missed several shots, he turned around and began to run. He came to a complete stop, however, after seeing several more walkers, crawlers, and a floater coming from the other end of the street.

Max growled and stomped his foot. "Oh, come _ON_!" He heard growling coming from behind and shot a walker that was closest to him.

"Hey! Yo, Sam!" Sam heard a voice that sounded like Flint's from the nearby alley. He turned his head and saw him running down the fire escape to the broken ladder. "What the hell did you guys do?! I stop babysitting you for ten minutes, and you go and summon a whole army of zombies!"

Max turned and smiled. "Aren't you proud of us, Flint?"

"Come on!" Flint called, "I'll help you up the fire escape! _HURRY_!"

"Hang on, Flint! I wanna shoot more of these assholes! I haven't killed anything in days!"

"Max, come on! We have to go _right now_!" yelled Sam angrily. He opened his mouth again to talk, but stopped when he noticed gurgling digestive noises from above. The floater was hovering over Max and was about to burst, but the lagomorph was too caught up in zombie killing to notice.

Without a second thought, he deliberately lunged himself towards Max, wrapping his arms around him and shielding him just as acid burst out of the floater and showered them with it. His eyes were watering, the skin on his back was burning, and he was letting out an ear piercing cry as he lost his strength and nearly fell on top of his little buddy.

"_Sam_!" Max attempted to hoist Sam on his shoulders and carry him but wasn't quite strong enough. "Flint, come help me get him!"

"Goddammit!" Flint Paper jumped down from the fire escape, ran down the alley, and got to Sam and Max. They were going to be completely closed in on by walkers on both sides very soon if they didn't leave soon. He picked Sam up by the arm and put him around his shoulders. "I got ya, Sam," he grunted as he began to help him run back to the alley while Max had his fun with the walkers.

Sam was whimpering and growling through his teeth as he struggled to keep moving, finally reaching an old garbage can by the entrance. Flint set him down next to it and Sam called out to him as he began to run back to Max. "F-Flint! Please. . . get Max!"

"Max!" he shouted, "Hurry up! We gotta move!"

"Aw, can't I just shoot a few more?" whined Max, still shooting zombies, "How about you take Sam somewhere safe, and I'll catch up- AAUUGGGHH!" A crawler had sneaked up from behind him and dragged him onto the ground. It held his arms in place, so Max could only kick and scream.

Flint ran over and stomped on the zombie's head a few times until it had smashed into several pieces, splattering Max's face and Flint's boot with rotten blood. He grabbed Max by his scarf and picked him up, bringing him close to his face. "When I tell you to hurry your ass up, I fucking mean it! You're gonna get us _killed_!" He let go of him, and they started to run back to the alley.

The zombie crowds were closing in quickly, and a walker had gotten close enough to grab onto Flint's arm. When he pulled out his gun to shoot it, another walker came up from behind and pulled on his other arm, forcing him to aim at the other walker's foot. It lost balance and fell over, wrapping its arms around Flint's waist and taking a large chomp out of his side.

After Flint screamed bloody murder, bullets whizzed past him and into the skulls of the zombies grabbing onto him. Max ran up behind him and pushed him towards the alleyway until they reached Sam. Max helped Sam stand up and commanded, "Flint, help me get Sam up to the fire escape!"

Flint was hunched over grabbing his sides. "Gimme a break, would ya? I just got munched by an undead dweeb over there!"

"Stop being a baby and help me!"

"No, Max," Sam winced, "Let him go first. I'll be fine." Before Max could protest, he trudged over to the fire escape and lifted Flint up to it. He grabbed onto the railings and pulled himself onto the platform, grunting painfully. When he got up, Sam handed Max over to him.

The zombies were now entering the alley, and Sam was only several feet away from death. "Grab my hand!" Flint yelled from the fire escape platform.

"Are you sure?! You're in pretty bad shape right now!"

"Just do it!"

Sam obeyed and jumped up to grab onto Flint's sweaty hands, nearly slipping before Max grabbed onto his other hand. Sam pulled himself towards them and lifted his feet onto the platform.

"You're really heavy, Sam!" Max exclaimed wearily as they finally managed to pull him up.

"I could list a million things wrong with you, little buddy," Sam replied, "but right now, we need to get somewhere safe and wait for the streets to clear back up!"

After Sam stood up on the fire escape platform, he, Max, and Flint climbed up the rest of the stairs to the roof as the zombies flooded the alley, groaning and limping closer and closer in an attempt to catch up with the detectives. Even as they reached the rooftop, the trio could still hear the deathly shrieks of the living dead that surrounded the building from all sides. However, as the day went on, and as the sky changed when the sun was replaced with the moon, it was clear that they would not be leaving until they got what they came for.


End file.
